A little more than a week after the election, and McCain is at it again. God, I wish he would stick to making frozen sweet potato french fries! (That’s not him? My bad.) He is vowing to get to the bottom of this … my word … bigger than average scandal surrounding the attack on the Benghazi consulate and the killing of ambassador Chris Stevens and his security detail. The Senator is so determined that he held a press conference while the committee he chairs was receiving testimony from the CIA in closed session. That’s right … he skipped the session where details of the attack were being disclosed to complain that the administration has refused to disclose details of the attack.
Seemingly freakish and perhaps the product of a superannuated brain, McCain is simply clinging to the mast of the ship he’s been commanding since his arrival in the Senate. The Benghazi controversy was cooked up during the campaign to try to drive a wedge into Obama’s national security advantage. The biggest mistake the administration made was likely one of too much disclosure as opposed to too little – while Romney was railing against them for “apologizing” to the killers of Chris Stevens, the administration attempted to quell the issue by releasing more details than anyone could have confidently claimed were reliable at the time. Now that Romney has lost, McCain is left with the issue, defending his ground to the last.
Of course, Obama’s pushback during his news conference got McCain’s famous temper going, and he’s been yelling at Obama to get off of his lawn ever since. This is kind of pathetic, frankly. The man is clinging to his tattered reputation as a foreign policy hawk, throwing bombs wildly and somewhat inaccurately. (My guess is that his bombing runs over North Vietnam were a bit scattershot as well.) The admiral needs to calm down, take his pill, and think about his constituents for five minutes.
Both of Obama’s presidential election opponents were heard from this week. But even with Romney’s doubling-down on his 47% sentiment to his donors, he sounded like less of a crank than his predecessor from four years earlier. We dodged a bullet both times, but particularly in 2008.
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jp